


(wo)men in glass houses

by pinkgrapefruit



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race (US) RPF
Genre: 'it made me SAD and that was what you WANTED wasn't it u lil fucker', F/F, Songfic, for the record, ortega 2021, ortega did like it very much, they're not having a good time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:34:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28719693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkgrapefruit/pseuds/pinkgrapefruit
Summary: They’re a square peg in a round hole who’s too ashamed to admit it and is therefore trying to pretend it doesn’t have any corners at all and the point is - they don’t fit.Coffee and cheese. Milk and sriracha. Piers Morgan and drag queens. No entiendo por favor.
Relationships: Brooke Lynn Hytes/Vanessa Vanjie Mateo
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	(wo)men in glass houses

**Author's Note:**

> i've completed my annual october-january hibernation and now you can have this. i hope you enjoy it, please comment if you do and then maybe I'll be inspire to write something of substance.
> 
> dutifully proof read by jaz and ortega.
> 
> I've missed you all.

_ I've been sleeping late _

_ And if I'm speaking honestly _

_ My dreams are the only place _

_ The thought of you can't bother me _

Vanessa is on her back - eyes piercing holes in the ceiling. It’s white, as most ceilings are, wood chipped and bumpy. There’s a coffee-coloured stain that jeeps drawing her eyes but she’s too scared to ask how it got there. If she’s honest, she doesn’t want to know.

Her bedmate is still fast asleep or is at least doing a good job of pretending, and it’s giving Vanessa too much time to think. Her immediate thought - the one that breaks through the carefully constructed walls at the edge of her mind - is how she wishes she wasn’t awake at all. She wants to be asleep again, running through the fields of spring flowers near her childhood home in Yorkshire, blissfully unaware of the mistake sleeping next to her.

She loathes to call Brooke a mistake - but there aren’t any other words.

The covers are soft between her fingertips and her pillow smells of eucalyptus and mint and it brings her back to her train of thought. They were never meant to happen. It’s simple really, the relationship was never meant to happen. They’re a square peg in a round hole who’s too ashamed to admit it and is therefore trying to pretend it doesn’t have any corners at all and the point is - they don’t fit.

Coffee and cheese. Milk and sriracha. Piers Morgan and drag queens. No entiendo por favor. 

(She truly does not understand).

They’ve been trying to change each other and like an elastic band, Vanessa just wants to snap back to how she was. She enjoyed her lazy Sundays with Riley, drowning last nights hangover in coffee just long enough to make it to brunch with Kiki and Silky. She misses her half-hearted gym sessions where she’d piss about with resistance bands and yoga balls in the studio off the side before actually doing some hip hop dancing and calling it a night. She hasn’t seen a shitty action film in months and, dare she say it, she misses bad nacho cheese.

She’s not the only one whos made ill-fated sacrifices - she can admit that - Brooke hasn’t been working late, misses her morning runs most days and only drinks chamomile when Vanessa isn’t at her house because the brunette says it smells like old people.

Drink your old people tea, Vanessa thinks in a more scathing tone than she would dare say out loud because it’s before six am and she’s in a worse mood than she thought. She looks at Brooke - her blonde hair splayed on the pillow like a halo. Fucking drink it.

  
  


_ And when I'm wide awake _

_ It takes all of my energy _

_ To tell our friends we've never been this happy _

The thing about breakups - is if you know they’re coming, you can watch them in slow motion like a train crash. 

A’keria has been watching this one for months. 

It’s the sort of ‘watch and wait’ scenario that leaves her grabbing the popcorn and tucking herself into the sofa with a blanket her nan crocheted and she’s not mad about it. 

So she watches the relationship go up in flames and wonders how either of them thought it would be a good idea to act on the sexual tension that’s been threading around them for years and she privately thinks that maybe she should have just set Vanessa up with her sister to save the trouble. 

Because climate change has moved faster than these idiots. 

  
  


_ Waiting for the glass house to come down _

_ Waiting to hear that crashing sound _

_ Waiting for the right words to tell you how _

_ I don't wanna be false art _

They move around each other in their perfectly choreographed morning routine - not a word is spoken but they are both fed, watered and ready to go when they need to begin their walk to the office. 

Their fingers are intertwined but it’s more of a perfunctory gesture than it used to be. Vanessa grabs Brooke’s hand somewhere between the offices for Walkers and Harveys. She always does.

With Brooke in a maxi dress, she looks more like a model than a lawyer and it allows Vanessa to exercise her possessive streak when a builder catcalls. They kiss bruisingly in the disabled stall before they head to their respective offices - frustrated before 9 am.

When A’keria asks how Vanessa is doing - she lifts the edge of her shirt to show the hickey embedded into her hip.

_ I've been making shit up _

_ But I'll come clean _

_ I finish in the bathroom _

_ While you fall asleep without me _

Brooke stays in the bathroom after sex. 

She washes herself slowly and thoroughly, as though any hint of mint shampoo left on her body would be a sin. (Brooke’s shampoo is lemon because she refuses to make her hair smell like toothpaste).

She cannot deal with post-coital cuddling today - the image of another person in her bed just too much to accept in the waning light of day. So she performs her nighttime routine twice to make sure that the summer sun has set entirely by the time she is back in the bedroom. It allows her to slide under the covers in the dark and pretend she is alone - if not for the steady exhales of Vanessa.

She is not right for Vanessa. 

The brunette deserves romance and wooing and all Brooke can give is detached sex in bathrooms and bitter black coffee. 

There are things she needs to unpack. A box of memories in her wardrobe that will sting more, the longer she leaves them hidden away. 

She cannot love herself with enough fervour to love Vanessa.

They both know it. 

So she suckles bruises onto her collarbone and calls it adoration.

_ And our friends they say they want this _

_ But they don't see _

_ That it's inevitable _

_ And inevitably _

“God, I want what you two have. It’s practically a romcom - friends to lovers.”

It’s harmless, just Courtney simpering as she heads towards the bar set up on the corner of the room but it makes Vanessa dig her nails into her palms so hard she worries she might break the skin. 

Brooke sidles up to her - cold lithe fingers wrapping around her waist as she leans down to whisper in Vanessa’s ear. 

“Bathroom, five minutes,” she whispers and then she’s gone.

Vanessa marvels at the way people interpret things they don’t understand. To most people - the blush that’s threatening to flutter across the apples of her cheeks is in response to a declaration of love, or a flirtation between sweethearts. 

They can never know the detached but furious way Brooke will make Vanessa come undone while the brunette is leaning against the sink - faucet poking into the small of her back. The way she will nip red marks into the flesh of her inner thigh and then later into her bottom lip - Vanessa’s tongue carrying out its own assault on Brooke’s mouth.

For all the ways the forced romance has ruined them - the sexual tension is as thick as the day they first met.

_ The glasshouse to come down _

_ Just waiting to hear that crashing sound _

_ Waiting for the right words to tell you how _

_ I don't wanna be false art _

Like a fairytale - their eyes met across a crowded room and that was it.

That is, of course, a lie - but it’s how they tell it.

In reality, Brooke had just moved to London from Devon and she’s booked an interview at the firm Vanessa worked HR for. Vanessa took her paperwork, A’keria noticed the spark, Brooke got the job.

They mistook sexual chemistry for romance and by the time they’d figured it out they were four months into a relationship of convenience.

Vanessa has always thought that friends with benefits was a ridiculous arrangement but men in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones and isn’t this just the kind of relationship she always scorned. 

Acquaintances that share bodily fluids, a bed and invites to dinner. Someone to share secrets with and hold hands on the way to work. Someone to watch sleep in the early hours of the morning and cuddle you when you’re drunk and lonely. 

Vanessa is, too often, drunk and lonely.

It’s a habit she intends to break.

_ Pretend we're picture perfect _

_ When we're breaking beneath the surface _

_ I don't wanna be false art _

They break up on a Sunday and finally, Vanessa can agree it’s a day of peace.

It can hardly be considered a breakup from her perspective - the only emotions left to untangle are Vanessa’s towards Brooke’s cats. It’s cold, clean and incredibly reminiscent of Brooke herself - cold, clean, perfect. 

Icy.

In a twenty-minute sweep of her apartment - every hint of the tall blonde is gone. 

_ Make love like we deserve it _

_ To cover up what's hurting _

_ I don't wanna be false art _

She makes a cup of coffee, inhaling the scent that reminds her so vividly of university and youth, and drinks it by her window. She plays her music loud.

She refuses to have any regrets.

_ I don't wanna be false art _

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @pink-grapefruit-cafe
> 
> don't be stingy with your thoughts.


End file.
